07 February 2024
Decision Theology is the notion that anyone in the whole world can simply make a decision in their minds to convert to following Christ, and God will honor it, and that person will be born again. Notice that the missing ingredient is saving faith.
I can't count how many times preachers from all sizes of churches have told me that if they could finagle someone making that decision, it wouldn't matter what kind of slimy thing the preacher does to get them there, that conversion is real. In other words, they flatly deny election and predestination, both taught in Scripture. In the minds of those preachers, any manipulation is fair game.
In the Radix Fidem community, our nickname for "Decision Theology" is "sales pitch evangelism". The whole thing rides on human persuasion. This is the reason the whole Graham Tribe could embrace Zionism even if they didn't like Jews. For the sake of publicity and "getting people saved" Graham was willing to lie about his convictions. I know all about that kind of "salvation" because I wasted two years of my life believing I was born again when I had no power at all to obey the Lord.
It won't matter how it's sold -- Evangelism Explosion, Four Spiritual Laws, the Roman Road, etc. Talking and reasoning people into religion guarantees they'll chase the wrong thing and neglect the feudal submission to Jesus Christ. They cannot claim their divine inheritance for this life.
Having counseled so very many people over the years in churches, I became quite certain that a solid majority of church members were in that same boat. They were convinced they were born again, but nothing inside their souls had changed. It was all in their heads. They had zero sense of assurance about the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
The vast majority of church folks have never heard the voice of God speaking in their hearts. Their religion is entirely man made. There is no genuine divine connection. It has nothing to do with whether they were Elect, but they were so misled about how faith works. They were still rooting around in the flesh.
And then, I rubbed elbows with a bunch of non-evies who quite clearly had the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They heard from Him quite often, and were able to exercise faith in ways that so many evies cannot. They belonged to traditions that rejected Decision Theology. They understood that faith was a gift from God, and that if He did not intervene in their lives, there was nothing they could do to manufacture a spiritual birth.
Only the Elect can exercise saving faith. The Damned can believe a lot of nonsense, but they cannot exercise faith. Sadly, the Elect can be so misled that they cannot awaken the faith God has given them.
The real deal is that we can help the Elect discover their spiritual birth by how we live by faith in front of them. In the process, it is unavoidable that a substantial number of Damned will be moved by demons to join the community. They will always betray themselves, chiefly by how they talk and act about this life and the baggage that comes with it. They are bereft of the sense of Eternity, and their sense of conviction will be frozen. It is inevitable at some point they will betray a lack of commitment to Jesus as Lord.
Jesus didn't die on the Cross to secure your spiritual birth. The Elect were called before the Creation of the world. Rather, Jesus died to open the Covenant of Abraham to all the Elect among Gentiles, and to end the Covenant of Moses with its racial and national exclusions.
People whom God does not touch by His initiative cannot exercise faith. Faith comes only from His hand as a gift. When the Philippian jailer asked what he must do to be saved, in his mind the word "saved" referred to peace with God in his life. We know that from the wealth of Greek and Roman literature on such things. When the New Testament refers to "salvation", that's what it is talking about. That's how Jesus used the term in His teaching.
Comments
Robust1
After years of deep diving learning about rhetoric/dialectic, sales techniques/persuasion, propaganda/psyops and even hypnosis I became deeply grieved in my soul. So much instruction and preaching is based on the above techniques, in not only the evangelical sphere but throughout "Christendom". I'm always searching my heart, "am I being manipulated by technique and emotion or is the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart?". There is so much darkness, lying, deception and delusion in the world. We need light. Watch against anger or bitterness friends. I speak to myself in this regard as well, maybe I'm just projecting my own struggle in this regard.
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